La La Love
by Wordsplat
Summary: "To be perfectly clear, Tony always knew that Stephanie Rogers was the best thing that would ever happen to him." High school fem!Steve AU, mindless fluff. Oneshot, Steve/Tony.


To be perfectly clear, Tony always knew that Stephanie Rogers was the best thing that would ever happen to him.

They didn't really have a "meet cute" moment so much as Tony walked into the wrong classroom on his first day of freshman year, spotted her across the room, and decided immediately that this would be his new third period class. He tried to sit next to her, only to be cut off at every attempt by a blocky shouldered, shaggy-haired jerk. He managed to snag the same table as her, at least, even if Scowly McCockblock was sitting between them.

Once the teacher finished their first day spiel and Tony bullshitted his way through why his name wasn't on the attendance list—a mixup, of course, because he just _loved…_whatever this class was—they were all told to introduce themselves to their tablemates. Tony nearly fell out of his seat to stretch across the table and eagerly extend a hand.

"HiI'mTonywho'reyou?" he blurted and oh god, did he really just say that? Why was he extending his hand, that was so dumb, what was he even—wow, her hand felt really nice—

"Steph." She smiled at him as she shook his hand, thankfully more amused than put off. God, he could get used to a smile like that. "And the guy whose lap you're sitting in is Bucky."

Bucky raised a threatening eyebrow at him until he leaned back out of his space.

"Right." Tony glanced between them. "Uh. Sorry. Just, wanted to say hi."

"You're not in this class," Bucky said bluntly.

"I wasn't, but I transferred, it just hasn't, y'know, gone through yet or anything but I'm sure they'll get to it, the office ladies are great, they work really hard, I think, probably, I would assume at least or wouldn't they get fired? Can they be fired or are they a part of that whole union thing? Not that I know anything about unions. I mean, I'm not dumb or anything, I just meant—"

He wished that whole 'foot in mouth' thing was literal, because at least then there'd be something to shut him up. But Steph was still smiling at him like he was funny, so maybe it wasn't so bad. He definitely didn't mind looking a little dumb if it earned him that smile.

"—so, uh, yeah. In this class. For sure," Tony finished awkwardly, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck and smiling back at her.

He was so busy watching the little quirk of her perfect lips he didn't notice the devious nature of it. "Right. And what class would this be?"

"The class," Tony stammered, "Is. This class? Obviously it's _this _class, I mean, why would you ask about my other classes, unless you want to like, hang out in them, or something, which would be—I mean, weird, right? Probably, not really, I wouldn't be _opposed _or anything that's just not really like the first question people ask each other, unless you do, which is cool and totally fine—"

"This is literally the most pathetic thing I have ever seen," Bucky declared.

"Bucky." Steph must've kicked him under the table, because Bucky swore lowly and reached down to rub at his shin.

"Come on,don't tell me you think that's _cute _or something._" _Bucky made a face at her.

"You don't think he's cute?" Steph asked him, tossing an assessing glance Tony's way. He fought to resist the ridiculous urge to puff out his chest or something.

"Why do you ask me this stuff?" Bucky gave a long-suffering sigh.

"It was just a question,"Steph reasoned innocently.

"No, I don't think he's cute," Bucky grunted, wrinkling his nose distastefully in Tony's direction, "I think his hair's a mess and he talks too much and he's been making weird eyes at you since he walked in here."

"You know I'm still here, right?" Tony asked, because he apparently had zero brain to mouth filter today.

"Unfortunately." Bucky made another face.

"He's nicer than he pretends to be," Steph assured Tony.

"Sure," Tony agreed, because she could have said the moon was made of cheese and that still would've been his answer. God, she was pretty.

"So." She pursed her lips a little, amused. "Are you a freshman too?"

"Yeah, I—"

The teacher started talking again before Tony could finish. He didn't get another opening until the end of what was apparently an _art _class—ugh—when Steph started packing up.

"Hey, so." Tony cleared his throat. "If you're a freshman too, you probably—I mean, not that you don't have friends, but—if you didn't know where to sit, or anything, you could always come sit. With. Uh. Me. And my friends, obviously, I don't sit alone in the corner or whatever—"

"I've got people to sit with." Steph smiled. "But thanks for the offer. I'll see you tomorrow, Tony."

Then she had her purse hoisted over one shoulder and was off out the door, Bucky only two steps behind her. The jerk paused long enough to turn and glare at Tony one last time before following her out. Tony didn't care that she had a bodyguard. He didn't care that she wasn't going to sit with him, or that she seemed more amused by than infatuated with him, she had _smiled _at him and he was so totally done for.

So suck on that, Bucky Barnes.

The rest of the semester was…well, in retrospect, it was horribly embarrassing, but Tony would absolutely do it all over again. He tried his best to garner Steph's attention pretty much any way he could, which tended to result in him getting his ass sent down to the office. He and Phil—or _that's Mr. Coulson to you, Mr. Stark, _as Phil would say, rubbing at his forehead in aggravation—got to know each other very well, but he got to know Steph much better. Between knocking over his easel like four hundred times—those things collapsed surprisingly easy, okay, shut up—and getting every art medium known to man on every pair of pants he owned when he was looking at her instead of what he was doing or where he was going, they got to talking. Well, "talking" mostly meant Tony asking her every dumb question that popped to mind, but still. She smiled and encouraged him and never hesitated to answer, so Tony didn't feel too bad about how his usual smooth nature—which did too exist, shut up Rhodey—somehow evaporated the second Steph glanced his way.

And okay, yeah, he'd stopped in the doorway because she was pretty. He could admit that. He was a teenage boy and she'd appeared like some kind of angel, petite with soft hair and bright eyes and the most stunning smile he'd ever seen so, yeah. He could be a little superficial, sue him. But the longer they shared a table and the more they talked, the more Tony genuinely liked _her_. Steph was funny, the smart, dry kind of funny and sometimes the dirty kind of funny that could have even Tony blushing, and incredibly intelligent. At first Tony thought it was just that she liked art—and she _really _liked art, her work blew his stick figures out of the fucking water—so she knew a lot about it, but then he'd hear her talking with Bucky about their shared History class or Sharon would lean over to ask her something about Chemistry and Steph would rattle off facts like she had an eidetic memory or something. Turned out, she was really well read; that was his real in, once he learned to ask about what she was reading, because he liked to think he was pretty well read himself and those conversations could go on long beyond what their teacher appreciated. They exchanged numbers sometime after the fifth or sixth time their exasperated teacher told them to kindly shut the hell up—not in as many words, but the 'I'd rather be a starving artist than have these brats talk over me one more time' look sort of conveyed the message—and proceeded from then on to text pretty much all day every day.

Looking back, Tony knew he probably could've asked her out sometime around the second week of school. But he couldn't really blame her for letting him go on a little, it was probably pretty amusing to watch. If it were anyone else, Tony would be right there with Rhodey and Pepper and everyone else teasing him for being such a blatantly lovesick fool.

It took him four months and three days to get the courage to ask her out. By "get the courage", he mostly meant that Bucky had cornered him in the quad one day after school, held him up by the front of his shirt and demanded to know if he was gonna screw around all four years or if he was gonna ask Steph out already.

"Don't you hate me?" Tony squeaked out.

"What, you wanna date me?"

"No!"

"Then it doesn't matter what I think of you, does it?"

"Steph cares."

"Are you really _arguing _with me right now?" Bucky asked incredulously.

"No, I mean, yeah, a little—"

"English."

"I don't want to cause problems between you guys or anything—" Bucky interrupted by laughing so hard he dropped Tony to the ground. _"Ow—"_

"Dude, Steph's been my best friend since the second grade, you couldn't cause shit between us if you wanted to. Besides, if I really and truly hated you, Steph wouldn't look twice at you."

"That's…good?"

"Yeah. So ask her out already."

"Hold on, I'm confused." Tony rubbed a hand to his forehead, while Bucky sighed impatiently. "So, you like me?"

"Fuck no." Bucky snorted. "We're _not _having a heart to heart here, Stark. Got it?"

"Got it?" Tony tried, still confused.

"Look, Steph is…" Bucky let out another sigh, glancing upwards. "I'm not blind. She's skinny and blonde and pretty, and you're sure as hell not the first guy to put on the brakes to stop and stare. So, yeah. I didn't like you."

"Didn't?"

Bucky glared at him. "When's her birthday?"

"Fourth of July," Tony answered, still not totally sure where this was going, "She tells people it's the sixth though because some jackass in elementary school called her Lady Liberty for a billion years."

"Her favorite candy?"

"Zagnuts, her dad used to keep them around."

"Used to?"

"Yeah, he died in service when she was—don't you know all this?"

"I do." Bucky shrugged. "Not everyone does."

"Huh." Tony considered that. He was a Not Everyone in Steph's life.

"You like Steph because she's Steph." Bucky shrugged. "If she has to date, you're not half bad."

"I'm sensing the start of a beautiful friendship."

"Break her heart and I'll break your face."

"There it is."

Since that was clearly as close to a blessing as Bucky would ever give him, Tony spent the next week collecting everything he knew Steph liked. He could be thoughtful when he wanted to be, but creativity wasn't his strong suit so he asked Pepper for help putting it all together. She helped him find a nice blue basket, Steph's favorite color, and decorate it with a neat little banner thingy that asked, in Pepper's much more legible print, _Homecoming?_

It took him a week of hemming and hawing before he was able to actually bring it to school. The plus side to waiting that long was that by the time he gathered his courage, nothing could shake him; not Rhodey and Clint's incessant whip noises, not the seven hoots of laughter he got from total strangers, not the punch to the shoulder he got from Bucky he was pretty sure he'd be nursing the bruise of for weeks. Whatever. Screw them, they were just jealous.

Tony walked into Steph's first period class with his head held high, perfectly arranged basket clutched to his chest. He'd arrived early so he could surprise her, and waited by one of the desks in the front—Steph definitely sat in the front, he knew her that well—until she showed up with her friends Sam and Natasha by her side.

"Hi. Oh, that's—more of you than I was—uh." He shook his head. Okay, Natasha was terrifying, but it wasn't like Tony had done anything to deserve Steph setting her on him, it was fine— "Hi. Steph. Would you like to go to Prom with—shit, Homecoming, I meant Homecoming, can I start over, crap, I meant—"

"Yes," Steph blurted.

"What?"

"I said yes, Prom, Homecoming, I don't care." Steph was beaming now.

"Great, that's great, super great. Awesome." Tony was pretty sure this was officially the widest, dumbest smile he'd ever worn in his life and he completely didn't care.

"You know freshman can't go to Prom, right?" Sam grinned at Tony.

"Shut up." Steph elbowed him.

"Is that all for _her?" _Natasha looked positively gleeful.

"What? Yeah, no, it's just, y'know." Tony rubbed the back of his neck. "Some, uh, stuff. I thought she might—you might, uh. Like. If you want, it's not like—I wasn't trying to buy you, or anything, I just—"

"I know," Steph interrupted with an eager sort of glee, stepping forward to touch his wrist, "I know, Tony, it's fine. You heard the part where I said yes, right?"

Tony nodded so hard he might as well have been a bobblehead. Then, because her hand felt really nice on his wrist, his hand decided without his consent that it'd be totally cool to flip over and take hold of hers. She squeezed back, for a second, until the teacher cleared their throat and glanced at Tony with pointed amusement.

"Class is beginning. If you're not a part of the class…"

"Right." Tony quickly withdrew his hand, pushed the gift basket forward, and backed away. "Right. I'll, uh. Call you?

Steph laughed. "How about I see you in third?"

"That sounds more likely." Tony gave an abashed grin, then ducked out the door fast as his feet would take him.

They texted throughout the entirety of first and second period. He got detention twice. Come third period, they just stared at each other like idiots until Bucky finally, exasperatingly, demanded Steph just switch seats with him already, successfully ensuring that Tony receive his third detention of the day. Tony didn't care at all, and tripped over his chair in his haste to get closer to Steph faster.

Homecoming was a resounding success.

Meeting Steph's mom at the door was a whole thing, for one. Mrs. Rogers was the picture of welcoming, hugging him like a lost son before dragging him inside for pictures and a completely, hilariously unsubtle interrogation until Steph lost her patience and dragged Tony back out the door with a call over her shoulder of, _I'll be back by midnight, Mom, god! You can't just _ask _him that! _She apologized to Tony a hundred times, but Tony just grinned and told her honestly that her mom was awesome.

They met up with the others at the nicest restaurant they could collectively afford for dinner: Olive Garden. Rhodey hadn't managed to get the nerve to ask Carol, but thankfully for everyone she'd gone ahead and asked him, while Pepper and Bruce were going as friends. Meeting Steph's friends—in a more lasting capacity than glancing assessments and threats against his life—was pretty cool, too. Sam was funny and chill, Natasha surprised him by being a lot less threatening than he'd been led to believe, and Bucky, though he kept watching Tony's hands like Tony was going stick them up Steph's dress the minute he glanced away, was actually a lot less antagonistic than Tony was expecting.

Dinner went great and the dance itself went even better; that first slow dance would always be in the top five of his greatest moments, along with their first kiss up on the roof of the school two hours after the dance ended.

The awkward, giddy newness to their relationship—and after Homecoming, it was definitely, officially a relationship—lasted longer than Tony expected. But then, neither of them had any practice with the whole relationship business. Tony had kissed a girl before, _twice _thank you, but his only other "relationship" had been with Pepper in sixth grade, when they'd held hands for a week before trying for a kiss and mutually declaring it the weirdest thing ever. Steph had never been in a relationship before either, not a real one, though she told him she had kissed someone before. She wouldn't tell him who. Tony suspected it was Bucky.

Anyway, they sort of danced around each other for a while. They'd talk incessantly in class and via text, but whenever they hung out alone, other people managed to "accidentally" show up and they both tried not to look too relieved about it. It wasn't that Tony didn't like her, because he absolutely did. He _totally _did, he liked Steph so much he wanted to burst with it sometimes, he just…having a girlfriend might've been a little more intimidating of a concept than he'd thought it'd be. She was so cool and smart and funny and he was…awkward. And nervous, really fucking nervous. He didn't even know sweaty palms were an actual _thing _until now, but they were and he got them every time they were alone, along with the return of his stammering which had totally disappeared in class or whenever they were around other people, thank you. But she seemed nervous too, and his nervousness helped her relax, so Tony figured it wasn't the worst thing ever to happen. Just the most embarrassing. Who got nervous around their own girlfriend, anyway?

"Tones," Rhodey called, clearly not for the first time, "Tony!"

"Huh?" Tony blinked, glancing away from Steph.

"I asked if you were going in too or if you were going to stay here all day." Rhodey jerked a thumb at the lake. Rhodey would be the last of their friends to go in; once he did, Tony would be alone with Steph.

"I can—I'll go later." Tony waved him off. They'd been dating for three months. He could be alone with his girlfriend. It was so totally not a thing.

"I think I'm going to go in," Steph said, pressing a kiss to his cheek before moving to stand.

"Hey, why don't we just, you know. Stay." Tony cleared his throat. "And talk."

"You want to talk?" Steph looked worried, and Tony didn't get it until she continued, "Or you want to 'talk'?"

"No, no." Tony shook his head quickly. "I just meant we don't really, you know, hang out alone often. And we're not really alone here, but we are, too. It's sort of a good halfway kind of thing, yeah?"

"Yeah." Steph chewed on her lip a moment.

"What's up?"

"I think there's something I should tell you."

"You're a dude, I knew it."

"No." She elbowed him, but his joke helped her relax a little and she shot him a quick grin. "Definitely not. But can you be serious a minute?"

"Sure." He took her hand, squeezed.

"So, I told you I kissed someone before you." She glanced at their connected hands, then out at the water where their friends were shouting and shoving and generally being rowdy idiots.

"Do you still like them?" Tony's heart sank. It was Bucky, he knew it, Bucky was going to steal her away and they were going to run off into their happy, not-nervous, normal-relationship sunset and—

"No," she said quickly, then, "Well. Not the way I like you. But that's not what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say…the person I kissed was Peggy Carter."

"Peggy." Tony frowned, confused. He didn't know any Peggy's, but the name sounded like— "A girl Peggy?"

"A girl Peggy. She was an exchange student at my middle school." Steph nodded, her jaw getting a determined sort of clench to it. "And I liked it, the kiss. I liked her. I like both, guys and girls. And that's…something I think you should know."

"Oh," Tony said, because he wasn't totally sure what else to say. He tried to figure out how he felt about that. "You definitely like me though, right?"

Steph couldn't seem to help a laugh. "Yeah, Tony. I definitely like you."

"Then…yeah, okay. I mean, shit," Tony quickly amended, "Not that you need my permission or whatever, that sounded bad, I just meant—you know, cool, great, information received and remembered—"

Steph mercifully interrupted him with a kiss on the cheek when he started to do some weird salute kind of thing. "Thanks, Tony."

"Sure." Tony couldn't help himself. "Hey, Steph?"

"Yeah?"

When she turned his way, he leaned a little closer and kissed her. "I really like you too."

"I don't remember saying I _really _liked you…" Steph teased. Tony grinned.

"Hey, you wanna maybe go to a movie sometime?" Tony decided he would ask her and actually said it aloud in the exact same second. "Just you and me?"

"Depends, is it a date?"

"Definitely."

"Then definitely." She smiled as she kissed him, he could feel it against his lips. He was pretty sure that right then, somewhere in the world, fireworks went off.

For all that Tony spent the entire twenty four hours beforehand in nothing less than a nervous panic, their first Official Alone Date turned out to be nothing less than fantastic. They were both still anxious in the beginning, that was pretty clear, but the walk to the theater was enough time for them to settle and relax. By the time they got there, they were comfortable enough to bicker about paying—they settled on Tony buying the tickets and Steph buying the popcorn—and by the time the movie started, Tony was at least 87% comfortable putting his arm around her. It immediately shifted 100% when she leaned into him and dropped her head against his shoulder without hesitation.

Tony walked her home after and kissed her goodnight, then spent the next week walking on air and smiling like a dope and basically being ridiculously, unrepentantly happy with everyone and everything. His friends teased him, Steph's friends teased him, even _Jarvis _teased him, but Tony didn't care at all.

Eventually, the giddiness faded. Life intervened, school got hard and his parents missed his birthday again and as the months went by he and Steph went on so many dates that they sort of stopped calling them dates altogether. It was just them hanging out again, like they did pretty much every day. The giddiness evaporated, but it was replaced with a sense of comfort and security Tony wouldn't have traded in a million years.

He knew he loved her pretty early on; when he was feeling romantic, he liked to say he'd known he was in love with her from the moment he'd laid eyes on her. Truth of it was, he may have been falling for her from minute one, but he knew he loved her when Brock Rumlow started chasing her halfway through sophomore year. Now, that sounded bad, but he didn't mean it in a possessive, "now that someone else wants her I want her more" way. But Rumlow was a suave, handsome senior football player, the guy every girl in the whole school wanted, and yet when he started having his football cronies give Steph flowers and candies and other dumb stuff, all Tony could do was laugh.

"Quit _laughing,"_ Steph insisted, shoving him nearly off the sidewalk as they walked home from school, "That's the third time this week!"

"I guess he thinks quantity is better than quality." Tony poked through the box of chocolates Steph had waved in his face a moment ago, picking out a caramel one and popping it into his mouth. "Yeah, this candy is shit. And he doesn't even know you hate caramel, he clearly hasn't done his research."

"You're not at all bothered by this?" Steph asked, exasperated.

"What, you want me to go beat him up?" Tony grinned. "But then we lose out on free candy."

"And here I thought the candy was shitty." Steph rolled her eyes.

"Still free." Tony shrugged, picking out a raspberry one, Steph's favorite, and offering it up to her. She rolled her eyes again, but he caught the quirk of a smile on her lips as she opened her mouth and allowed him to feed it to her. "Tell me what you want me to do, babe. You know I'll do it."

"I don't want you to do anything, I can handle it," Steph admitted, "I just thought you'd care a little more."

"You said you can handle it." Tony shrugged. "I trust you. It's not like you're gonna go run off with the guy."

Steph laughed. "Someone's confident."

"Should I not be?" Tony grinned at her.

"How do you know I'm not secretly charmed?" Steph hummed noncommittally. "He _is _a football player. And he can already grow a beard…"

Tony pretended to look betrayed. "Low blow, I told you about that disaster in confidence."

"You'll look good with a beard." Steph raised a hand, rubbing her thumb over his jawline before pressing a quick kiss to it with a smile. "Not today, clearly. But someday."

And that was it.

Tony didn't know how or why, couldn't pin down the reasoning exactly, just knew it had something to do with how sweetly she kissed him then, how she said _someday _and he…he wanted it. He wanted the someday. Not a desire sort of wanting, because as intimate as being with her always felt, it didn't have to do with sex. Well, it did—he was fifteen and horny and he absolutely wanted to have sex with her—but there was more to it. He kept circling back to the word intimacy and that was it, even if he'd never done anything more than kiss her, there was an intimacy he had with her that he couldn't replicate with anyone else, couldn't imagine even wanting with anyone else. So he looked at her and she looked at him and they both stopped walking for a minute to just stare at each other until Tony opened his mouth and—

"I think I'm in love you," Steph blurted. Tony froze and she kept talking, faster and faster like if she didn't get it out now she never would. "I don't think I am, I know I am, I'm in love with you and you're staring at me like I'm crazy and I get it, we're fifteen, it _is _crazy, and you don't have to say it back, I just have to tell you because—because I don't know why, because I love you and I don't want to bottle it up. Because you're amazing and ridiculous, because you trust me and you listen to me, because—"

"Because you love me," Tony finished in a rush, "And I love you, I love you too, Steph, of course I do."

"You do?" Steph looked more pleased than surprised, leaning into him and clasping both hands around his neck.

"Hell yeah I do." Tony beamed, dropping the chocolate box and putting both hands on her waist to pull her into a kiss.

"Tony—"

"Shitty chocolate anyway," Tony just mumbled against her mouth before kissing her again, then again and again because yeah, it was a little crazy but it was also totally, completely love and no one would ever convince him otherwise. Fifty years from now, even if they broke up and moved on and never saw each other again, if someone asked him who his first real, true love was, he knew he was going to say _Stephanie Grace Rogers _without a damn second's hesitation.


End file.
